Thursday, June 23, 2011

When I posted on Diversification in STEM Fields, I mentioned Professor Ursula Keller's article in February's OPN. I reached out to Professor Keller with a few specific questions hoping to gather more insight on what a junior faculty member such as myself can do and what are the specific aspects of STEM academia that are keeping the door closed for women and minorities. Dr. Anna Garry, who works with Professor Keller on the issue of outreach and retaining talented women scientists, was kind enough to respond back with some very thought provoking responses.

If you haven't read Professor Keller's article, it can be found here (not pay link). I suggest you do so not only for the context of the questions but also for just general insights into the diversification problem in STEM fields. I've posted my questions so you can see the specific context with the shortened question and response below.

[Original Question: I completely agree that senior male and female scientists/engineers will carry the most weight in changing the culture in STEM fields. However, as a tenure track faculty member who fits the stereotypical profile (white, male, American), how can I be an ally even in my early career stage for eliminating sexism and discrimination? Are there particular steps to take for someone in their early career to buffer themselves from outside influences which may lead to a more discriminatory view in the future? (For example, you start out with good intentions but change over time to get into the good ‘ole boys club.) ]

1. How can a new male tenure track professor buffer themselves from outside influences that can lead to a more discriminatory view in the future?

[AG] I think that the key here is to keep an open mind alwaysabout attitudes and assumptions that you see and hear. In addition you can speak up when you see something uncomfortable. Often women are told to lighten up, or not to take things so seriously, or that a person didn't mean it. If a male colleague/member of staff says that what is happening/said is not right, or that it's discouraging - this is really reinforcing for women, they feel supported and respected. For women the environment they work in matters enormously, the old "take it as a joke" attitude is very wearing if the joke is always on you.

Specific examples: I am not a physicist, I am a political scientist, educationist and writer. I am used to being in a more balanced workplace, gender wise.

In the current environment I hear general statements like "I cried like a girl" and there is also a common attitude of competitiveness that is not a natural approach for a lot of women. You have to be very confident in this environment to be different, and not become isolated.

In addition, because I am a woman I have (for the first time in my life) experienced the initial assumption, from men and women here who don't know me, that I work in a secretarial, assistant capacity. This is an awful experience (I have a BSc, MA and PhD), and it hasn't happened to me before. Dealing with this in an angry way would not work, because you are dealing with unconscious thoughts, and who do you talk to about this, if it is an underlying assumption. What I did was set out on a campaign of clarifying the situation to the right people. It worked, all is clear. But I am an experienced, confident, person who could do it, even though it made my heart sink that I had to (and may have to deal with it again). What I was dealing with was subtle, unconscious assumptions, rather than open minds about what the range of roles a woman can take.

I am also hearing from young women scientists that they have to deal with the uncomfortable situations where male colleagues will not/cannot look them in the eye when they speak, and that some men talk only to the men in the group. For male scientists to include women all levels in these group situations is vital and, ultimately, very encouraging.

As you are aware, I think it may be very easy for a successful male academic to adopt the communal departmental mind, if all the colleagues in a department are male. A second thing that is necessary for male scientists to realize is that women (and the research has shown this) are often very self-questioning, unconfident and perfectionist in their work. They may think they are not good, even if their marks are excellent. If they are not discouraged at this stage of initial nervousness, they can produce great work. Positive reinforcement and encouragement really helps in the retention of women.

[Original Question: After reading your article, I agreed with the overall points you are attempting to make. Identifying borders, changing the work culture, and becoming an advocate of a new scientific culture all sound good but how do we go about initiating this change? Do you think there are individual differences and borders between STEM fields or are the obstacles to change largely uniform across all STEM fields?]

2. Are the obstacles similar across the STEM fields, or are their individual differences?

This is a huge question and I don't have the answer to this, but we will consider this question as we work. Certain areas of STEM have been studied more than others. I haven't, however, seen a great deal of work about the situation in Mechanical Engineering. One of my neighbours is a researcher in the ETH Mechanical Engineering department. There are two women there out of 40 researchers.

I think one answer is that the academic career has common issues across all of the science subjects in the sense of how a scientist deals with the obligations of scientific research, publications, conferences and dealing with family life.

[Original Question: Another point you make in the article states that women are opting out of academia as it is now defined. And from that, I presume that some men do not opt out of academia, either because they are OK with its current definition or are willing to work in a system that has some significant drawbacks (tenure and funding rat-race, perpetual postdocs [specifically science fields], pressures to publish, to name a few). What is it about an academic position that is driving women away but not driving men away? Is it simply a numbers game where there are still enough men within the system that there will be some pursuing academic careers regardless of the drawbacks?]

3. Do women and men opt out of academia in different numbers?

[AG] This, I think, is an important question and I am trying to address this in my work. I haven't seen any figures or studies on this. My aim is to interview all the scientists I can, across our network, on key decision moments in their careers and identify then the attitudes of men andwomen to idea of remaining in academia, and the situations that cause them to leave.

My sense is that a lot of men opt out of academia too, for many reasons. It may be that we are also losing the type of men that would make a real contribution to changing the scientific environment for the benefit of the retention of women and minority groups!

[Original Question: From your profile in the article and your current position, I see that you have lived and worked in multiple countries with different cultures. From my own experiences in the US and Europe, I have seen a dichotomy arise within STEM fields resulting from more cultures mixing. As the cultural diversity increases, the natural progression is to suggest discrimination over time will decrease due to the diversity. However, as more cultures are represented with differing views on societal roles for males and females, I find the progression has stagnated. From your experience, do you think this could be one (of many) reasons for why discrimination persists?]

4. The impact of cultural diversity on the stagnation of the situation for women scientists

[AG] This is an enormous question, and there hasn't been much investigation of this. There are certainly anecdotal stories on the problems that different cultural views of the role of women create. I don't think it is possible to answer this, but it is certainly something that we are alert to. It may be that someone who we commission for the OPN "Reflections on Diversity" column, from a minority scientist point of view will address this topic.

Ok, interview over, back to my normal GEARS voice. Dr. Garry has also mentioned to me that OPN will be launching a column in the near future called "Reflections on Diversity", discussing Women and Minorities in Science.

While there is a lot of information to digest in Dr. Garry's responses, there's two items which immediately jump out to me: the lack of eye contact (Q1) and that men which may make a real contribution to changing diversity might be the ones leaving academia (Q3).

I definitely have been in interviews and meetings where the speaker will not make eye contact, and from asking around, most people seem to say the same thing. I'm not sure why people don't make eye contact (without staring!) but when you're talking to someone and they're talking to the wall, it's very annoying.

More importantly, I think Dr. Garry brings up a hugely interesting suggestion in Q3. Because academic jobs are limited, there will always be people leaving academia after their PhD/Postdoc. But maybe the men that are leaving are the ones that would be the type of person to try and effect change. But since they leave for industry, the majority of men left in academia are of the type that perpetuate the current standard or focus on their research without thinking of things outside of it. I'd love to see some evidence of that but it is a very interesting proposition.

I would like to thank Dr. Anna Garry and Professor Ursula Keller at ETH Zurich for taking the time to respond and for giving some thought provoking insights. More information on Professor Keller's group can be found here.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

One of the reasons I started blogging was to share my tenure track experiences with others. And like all other bloggers, you start reading other blogs and get a lot (well, sometimes) of useful information for what other tenure track faculty did in certain situation. Underneath all of that info though, there is an undercurrent always discussing the topic of diversification within STEM fields. This isn't just limited to blogs but in real press as well.

In February's OPN (pay link), Professor Ursula Keller at ETH Zurich tackles the topic by proposing that senior faculty (both male and female) need to be the main advocates for diversification. Professor Keller also states that we need to change the present working culture, something which I think is nicely summarized by GMP's post on Work-Life Balance. The thing is, I'm just a n00b at all of this (no seniority) and I have no real insights into how to effect change because I am a stereotypical, white male engineer.

This same exact question was asked by Hermitage: "What would you like to see from tenure-track and not-yet-tenure-track menfolk? How can they pitch in?". [For details see] However, the respondents didn't really come up with any profound ideas (not trying to offend...), but rather stuck to basically saying stop being an asshat. There were other items mentioned like try to disassociate the sex of the author when reviewing/judging/commenting and to speak up when you see an obvious case of sexism.

But what else can someone in my situation (young, male tenure track engineer) do to not perpetuate the norm?

In a professional world, I don't think someone should be characterized as a humorless bitch, nor is asking is it that time of the month. On one hand, I'm actually shocked that faculty members would ask that but on the other, I can't say I'm surprised - we can be asshats for no reason. But is that essentially the list of things a male faculty member can do to help?

Treat female faculty members (and other minorities for that matter) as just "normal faculty". Their record should speak for themselves, not their outward appearance.

Maintain professional courtesy even when women/minorities aren't around.

Just work based on the work, not the authors.

Try to more vocal about your work-life balance.

The first three to me seem like they should be a no-brainer. I'm married to a female engineer with a PhD so I don't need any other justification for woman's competency in engineering (and all STEM). But I think the 4th item on the list can really go a long way to making a difference. That's especially the case for my situation because I'm in academia (flexible working environment) whereas my wife works in industry (structured working environment). I expect I'll be doing my fair share of dr's visits (like today!) and staying home with a sick child, and so on.

But that brings me to a grand question that I can hopefully get some answers from the blog'o'sphere.

Are male faculty members that have female partners in STEM fields better allies for diversification than those whose partners are not and does that make for a better work-life balance?

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Sorry for not posting in a while. I've been swamped with proposal work and traveling. Today, over at Engineer Blogs, I've posed the questions Would a postdoc have helped? It's a question that's been on my mind since I've been working on this massive, multi-university proposal. More to follow on that today or tomorrow.

Monday, June 6, 2011

When you get that initial letter (or email in my case) that states you're getting a tenure track offer, it's essentially life-changing. As you can barely restrain yourself in your office chair (or in bed checking your iphone at 3 am...), you want to rejoice in pure happiness. There's fireworks going on in the background. You're having delusions of grandeur thinking you're going to hit 9 out of 10 proposals. You're going to be an awesome teacher with near perfect reviews. Blah blah blah.

Fast forward a few months. You're settling into your new position. Working on your first proposal. Finishing those last few papers that you need to do otherwise you'll never get them done. Oh, and then DrWife reminds you to finish submitting your relocation reimbursement. So, you collect your receipts and head to the department administrators who will undoubtedly help out the new guy. You're handed a folder with a bunch of papers from the interview and hiring process. You start browsing the paperwork as you're chatting with the secretary when you notice something very peculiar.

There's a misplaced piece of paper in your folder with the information of another interviewee of the university; someone they've passed over. You can help but look at the name, address, and current institution. And it turns out this is someone that you've met before and has a "name" in your field...

And then it dawns on you. There are a lot of people that submitted for this position and you're the one that got it. But it doesn't stop there. There are also people that you probably know and they were passed over for you. And eventually you'll want to make a splash in your field and undoubtedly some of the people that were passed over may resent you for it. Killing your proposals, negative comments in professional societies, etc etc.

So that begs a few questions. If you're in academia, do you eventually find out if other people applied for the position? And if those persons reveal themselves, have they been good sports about it? Or should I expect some backlash during some of my proposal reviews, paper reviews, etc etc? If you're out in industry, how does it work out there? I have no clue if things are as tight-knit as they can be in a specific academic field.

About GEARS

GEARS is a tenure track assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and Optics at a small, private R1 university. GEARS blogs about his experience going through the tenure track process and all the trappings of Grads, Engineering, Academia, Research, and Students. His random musings are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SnowU. He can be reached at prof dot gears at gmail dot com.